LOWER PROVIDENCE — With the Pentagon recently shedding the last remnants of rules confining female soldiers to supporting roles in America’s Military, women are one step closer to the front lines of combat — a place where they don’t belong, noted Marine Corps veteran Rebecca Catagnus.

“Women have always been involved in combat somehow, whether it would be taking care of soldiers during World War II or the Revolutionary War; they just haven’t done the hand to hand fighting,” said the Lower Providence resident. “That’s always been done by Infantrymen who were trained together. Just because you weren’t in the jungle in Vietnam didn’t mean you couldn’t serve. Without all the nurses during World War II or Vietnam, who would have taken care of all the injured soldiers? Men and women both want to serve their country and have a feeling of pride about America and do their part to serve and be a part of all that.”

Catagnus recalled that the issue of women in combat was a hot topic back in the late ’90s when she served as a public relations specialist stationed in New Orleans, following training at Parris Island.

“It’s been part of the dialogue for a long time,” said Catagnus, who once actually dreamed of being part of an infantry troop. “When I was 18 or 19 I thought if I was allowed I wanted to fight in combat. Being young, I think you’re idealistic and you don’t really understand the entire institution of the military. As I’ve gotten older and have had my own personal experiences I don’t know if it’s the right choice right now. If you look at all the mistreatment of women in the armed forces I don’t know if it’s the best idea to open up those fields now. I think they should deal with those issues first before they open up a basically man’s club and allow women to go into the fields.”

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Combat aside, women are not safe in the military to begin with, allowed Catagnus, whose father and grandfather inspired her military ambitions with illustrious careers of their own in the Marine Corps.

“Women have a very high sexual assault and sexual harassment rate. They shouldn’t be opening up the infantry without having that issue resolved. Look at how many generals in the last year have been relieved of duty for sexual misconduct. That trickles down to the lower ranks. Until they have all that resolved they’re just putting women in more danger.”

Women in combat are not likely to be greeted warmly by their male counterparts, she noted.

“They are absolutely not going to be accepted. It’s a matter of national security. This decision shouldn’t just be made and then implemented. I think they should do research to see how it’s going to affect mission accomplishment and communication because there is a unique connection for a group of men who have come together with the common goal and I don’t know that women will ever be able to forge that kind of relationship that I think men can. In a combat situation they have to be able to communicate with one another, and studies show that men and women have different ways of communicating.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a six-year Marine Infantryman wounded in Iraq articulated all manner of reasons too numerous for this article as to why the new measure lifting the ban on women is preposterous — and why it is founded on the premise that the chances of any combat initiative popping up in the next 25 years are practically non existent

Philosophically, intellectually and practically — no matter how you approach it — women in combat is a ludicrous and dangerous concept, he said.

“Combat is primal,” said the veteran, also an accomplished military historian. “There is nothing — nothing! — that compares to it. Infantry combat … ground combat … is nasty, disgusting and primal. Despite what was said in the election, bayonets are used. You can’t change the operating environment. Diversity for diversity’s sake lowers the effectiveness of the organization and numerous studies have proven that.”

Couple that with the biological differences in men and women, and the women-in-combat logic is even more flawed, he noted.

“If you take a woman, same size and shape and put her up against a man in a fight, 90 percent of the time if not more, she’s going to lose. That’s why in UFC fighting, in boxing and in football, you don’t see males and females fighting each other. The male’s always going to win. People say you can’t put a female in the ring with a man because it’s an unfair advantage for the male. Well, if you’re not willing to put a male and a female in a ring and let them beat each other up for 15 minutes, yet put them in a combat situation, where it’s more intense, and now the intensity level isn’t measured over minutes or hours but in months, where the other side is entirely men, that’s unequal and unfair. You’re not giving the woman an equal chance at survival as a man. Ethically, it’s an inequality because of the biologic difference. It’s understood that although men are 99.9 percent the same biologically, women are all different. Are some women bigger and stronger? Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, but they are anomalies.”

Women also process their thoughts much differently than men, he pointed out.

“That’s not a bad thing. That’s the problem with things like this when you assign a value to it. It’s not good or bad, it’s just the way it is. Countless studies have shown that men and women don’t bond with each other the way men bond with other men. And that’s OK too.”

Veteran Heidi De Jesus said her view of women in combat hadn’t changed since the years she served in the Air Force, 1989 to 1993, in San Angelo, Texas.

“I think when it comes to intelligence we don’t have anything to prove and we can go neck and neck with a man,” she said, “but there is a factor you cannot deny: a woman’s body will never be a man’s body. Sometimes you’re going to find situations in combat where you have to use your body for battle purposes and we’re never going to have the same strength as a man. That’s undeniable. I don’t see what we need to prove because women have been in the military for many years now and have proven that we are a valuable (resource.)”

Now working in the private sector, De Jesus served as a logistics officer in charge of transportation and supply, after going through some grueling training in Air Force Survival School.

“It’s the school that trains all the pilots and navigators for survival situations when in combat. My commander told me that for me to understand the mission I had to go through the training, and I did. And I survived the training like any air crew member would do. But it’s one thing to be in a scenario where you know you’re going home, and another to be in a battle situation where you don’t know whether you’re going to get out alive or dead. You don’t go into the military for the money or the fame,” she added. “ You go because you want to serve and you feel that it is the right thing to do. In my case, I knew I could use my intelligence and eagerness and give something back.”